India’s food systems sit at the intersection of multiple challenges and opportunities. Millions of people still lack access to affordable, nutritious food. Women, who contribute a significant share of agricultural labour, often remain confined to informal and low-income roles. At the same time, current production systems place increasing pressure on land, water, and animals.
What if one model could begin to address all of these at once?
ProVeg India’s Plant-Based Livelihoods Project is built on that idea: that food systems can be reshaped to better serve people, animals, and the planet through practical, scalable solutions rooted in local contexts.
From labour to leadership
Women are central to India’s agricultural economy, yet their contributions are often undervalued and underpaid. The project aims to change this by enabling women to move beyond informal labour into skilled, income-generating enterprise roles.
At the heart of the model are community-based food processing units, set up within Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs). These units are designed to be led by women offering training, technical support, and pathways to ownership. Instead of being limited to farm-level work, women are supported to participate in value-added processing, business operations, and supply chains.
This shift, from labour to leadership, creates more stable incomes, builds local capacity, and opens up new possibilities for economic independence.
Rethinking what we produce and how
The project focuses on developing affordable, plant-based food formats using locally grown crops, especially pulses. These foods are designed to be both nutrient-dense and scalable, with formats such as fortified textured vegetable protein (FTVP) that can be easily integrated into everyday meals.
This approach is not about replacing existing food systems overnight. Instead, it is about expanding the range of accessible, lower-impact food options, particularly within institutional settings like schools, hostels, and hospitals.
By working with partners such as The University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology (TDU), the project ensures that these products are not only affordable and easy to produce, but also tailored to local diets and nutritional needs.
Nutrition that reaches where it matters
India continues to face a persistent protein and micronutrient gap, especially among children and low-income communities. Large-scale feeding programs already play a critical role in addressing this—but they also present an opportunity to do more.
By supplying plant-based, protein-rich food formats to institutional meal programs, the project helps strengthen the nutritional quality of meals at scale. These formats are designed to be adaptable, allowing for fortification based on specific needs, whether for school children or other vulnerable populations.
In this way, the model connects local production directly to public nutrition systems, ensuring that improvements in food quality can reach those who need it most.
Lower-impact pathways for food systems
Alongside social and nutritional outcomes, the project also contributes to building more resource-efficient and resilient food systems.
Plant-based foods, particularly those derived from pulses, generally require fewer inputs such as water and feed, and have a lower environmental footprint compared to many animal-based products. By strengthening supply chains around these crops, the project supports more climate-resilient agricultural practices and reduces pressure on already strained natural resources.
At the same time, increasing the availability of plant-based foods within large-scale systems can contribute to a gradual shift toward more humane and sustainable production patterns, aligned with broader environmental and ethical considerations.
A model designed to scale
What makes this approach particularly promising is its potential for replication. The initial phase focuses on establishing and testing the model—setting up one processing unit, training women entrepreneurs, and developing scalable food formats.
But the long-term vision goes further: to create a network of women-led, community-owned enterprises that can supply institutional markets across regions. With India’s public food programs serving millions of meals every day, even modest integration of such models can have a meaningful impact.
Looking ahead
The Plant-Based Livelihoods Project is not a single intervention, it is a systems approach. One that connects livelihoods, nutrition, sustainability, and compassion in a way that is both grounded and scalable.
By investing in women, strengthening local production, and expanding access to plant-based foods, the project offers a pathway toward food systems that are more humane, inclusive, resilient, and aligned with the needs of the future.
And importantly, it shows that change doesn’t always require disruption. Sometimes, it begins with building better alternatives one community at a time.
